and that infidelity, on the other, is no longer the infidelity of the century after; but a practical infidelity, with utilitarian science for its God, and the deification of man for its end; and they need skilfully to select and employ their weapons accordingly. Are they to shew themselves the philanthropists of the day? then, if many around them are seeking, from sincere but mistaken motives, to benefit the world by human expedients alone, they, so far from contenting themselves with merely decrying such expedients, must seek to surpass them by the strenuous application of God's remedy. If other sections of the church than that to which they belong are abroad in the field of conflict, they are to mark their movements, not to envy, but to emulate their activity, and to share in their success. If the world of Paganism is crying for instruction and spiritual help, they should know something of the places to be occupied, and of the facilities for taking possession. And as the demand on the resources of the Church goes on increasing, they should be prepared to bring forth the strong reasons of the Gospel for entire self-consecration. And in thus saying that a ministry to be effective must be adapted to its age, and that this supposes education, what are we saying after all, but that God is conducting the affairs of his kingdom on a plan-that in every age that plan advances-that his ministers are to mark that advance and to fall in with it; and that in proportion as they adjust their movements to his-link themselves on to his plans, and keep pace with his progress, they move with the force of omnipotence, simply by moving in a line, and in harmony with it.

5. The importance of the education we advocate will appear if you consider, next, that a firm and enlightened confidence in the sufficiency of the Gospel, and in its ultimate and universal triumph, is an essential element of an effective ministry. Our last particular contemplated the minister in his relation to the present; here, we regard him rather as related to the future. A conflict is before him-a conflict of

opinion, not only with foes without the pale of the visible church, but with foes within. Shall he advance to it timidly, or full of heart and hope? Leave him

in doubt respecting the sufficiency of the Gospel as a remedy for the world's misery, and you impart feebleness to his ministry, and indifference to the diffusion of the truth; you dispose him to seek for aid from that very world it is appointed instrumentally to save; you fill his mind with alarm at every new test to which the discoveries of science may subject the Gospel; and thus you invite some modern Celsus to repeat one of the oldest charges alleged against it, that it fears the light of science; and you encourage the attacks of a world which it was intended to lead in glorious triumph. But let him see the homage which the truth has invariably received from science; let him see how the comparative study of languages, which was at one time deemed inimical to the Mosaic history of the dispersion, is now tending to corroborate that history, and causing men, in this respect, "with one mind and one mouth to glorify God;" how the further the physiology of man has been examined, the more evident has become the common parentage of the human race; how monumental history, once summoned from the cavern temples and tombs of India and Egypt to contradict the Mosaic chronology, has shamed its advocates, and confessed itself of compara tively modern date; how, when the famed zodiacs were brought from Egypt, and Astronomy itself was supposed to be enlisted against the Bible, they turned out to be mere monuments of astrological folly, and the very 66 stars in their courses fought against" the infidel attempt; and how, when Geology was invoked to the conflict with the cosmogony of Moses, "the earth literally disclosed her dead"—the fossil remains of successive creations-proclaiming the fact that miracles, so far from being impossible, have ever belonged to the course and constitution of nature, viewed on a comprehensive scale;-let the student of Revelation know these facts, and, like the servant of

the prophet, his eyes will be opened to behold that the object of his solicitude is surrounded as with horses and chariots of fire. Let him know that the believers in Divine Revelation have never had to engage in its defence, but they have returned from the conflict laden with fresh spoil; that many, once known as its bitter foes, abandoning the arms wherein they trusted, have swelled the ranks of its enlightened friends; that, however threatening the aspect of a discovery on its first appearance, sooner or later it has uniformly given in its adhesion to the claims of Christianity, and has inscribed its name on the mountain monument of her

evidences; that Archæology bringing its medals and inscriptions in profusion, and Literature its rolls, and documents, and stores of critical science, have poured them like gold, and frankincense, and myrrh, at her feet and he will see that everything has "turned out rather for the furtherance of the Gospel."

Would you augment his confidence in it still further! Shew him how perfectly it is adapted to the nature of man, and to the progress of society-how full it is of principles; how thickly sown with the seeds of things; how suggestive and fertile of good; so that no truly benevolent society or effort is known to us, however original and novel it at first appeared, the principle of which the Bible had not anticipated, and been always enforcing. And, convinced of this, will he not cherish the assurance that many an unthought of agency for good lies slumbering yet in its hallowed page?-that many a verse, familiar in appearance as the humble pebble which encloses a precious gem, conceals the type and principle of future agencies destined to scatter their blessings over the earth?—and that every such agency is, in the hand of God, as certain of fulfilling its course, and answering its end, as if it came visibly accredited with the seal of omnipotence; that we ourselves are not borne through the regions of space by virtue of our union with the globe we inhabit more certainly, than such instrumentality is destined to succeed by virtue of its

union with that Divine plan which is ever in progress— ever moving steadily and majestically towards the high throne of God, and bearing the world along with it. An enlightened confidence in the Divine adapta-. tion and sufficiency of the Gospel will render the man of God independent of every other aid-thoroughly furnished for every emergency and every duty; while the firm persuasion of its ultimate triumph will impart an ardour to his activity, and a moral dignity to his onward step, eminently conducive, through God, to the efficiency of his labours.

6. With our views of the importance of an educated ministry thus sustained, are we not warranted to expect, sixthly, that its importance will be borne out by a reference to history, ancient and modern, sacred and ecclesiastical? And, here, need I remind you that Moses, "God's first pen," as Lord Bacon calls him, and the instrumental founder of the Jewish economy, was rich in all the lore of Egypt; and that from the time of Samuel, with only one exception, so far as we know, that of Amos-the prophets and great public teachers of the people were taken by God from "the schools of the prophets," where they had been taught the learning of the country, and of the day? Descending to the opening of the Christian economy, need I remind you that the Apostles, after enjoying for three years the instructions of the Great Teacher himself, were then made learned by a miracle?—that he who was last called-the most useful of them all, and who filled the Roman empire with the sound of salvation— was the scholar and philosopher Paul?—and that he, in condemning, as he did, a false philosophy, was in effect pronouncing a commendation of the true? Need I refer to the high estimate in which education was held by the ancient fathers of the Church, by reminding you of the fact that they deprecated the edict of the emperor Julian-forbidding Christians to lecture in the public schools of science and literature-as more destructive to the Christian faith than all the sanguinary persecutions inflicted by his predecessors? And why

did that philosopher of persecution adopt such a measure-but because he well knew the wounds which learning, in the hands of the Christian apologists, had inflicted on Paganism; and that, as Waddington remarks, it was comparatively useless to oppress the Christians by bodily coercion, or even by civil degradation, unless he could at the same time degrade their minds by ignorance.

The time, alas, arrived, when they began to choose that ignorance for themselves. At the close of the sixth century, Gregory the Great rejected from the service of religion that learning of which he himself was destitute. How appropriate that the man who first authoritatively extinguished the light of secular knowledge should have been the first potentate in the new kingdom of popish darkness; for he it was who, finding the various elements of that great system of imposture ready to his hand, organized them into that gigantic structure of evil which for so many ages stood

erect with its foot on the neck of the civilized world. How suggestive the fact that he who said, in effect, "let there be mental darkness," and he who said, "let the man of sin arise and triumph," should have been one and the same individual!

Let it not be supposed, indeed, that we attach any spiritual value to mere knowledge. We are even free to admit that Germany, the nation perhaps the most profoundly learned, has long been the most prolific of infidelity. But much even of that scepticism is only the natural reaction of that mental darkness and depression in which ignorance so long detained the nations. Yes, ignorance has had her millenium; a long and dreary period, during which not merely learning became extinct, but almost the curiosity and desire to learn; the Bible became a book comparatively lost and unknown; and the feeble glimmering of knowledge which remained in the hands of a few was employed, not to enlighten the people, but to delude; and proved sufficient to hold the enfeebled mind of Christendom thine most servile subjugation.